Chris
Trueman is a maximalist. In his exuberant, large-scale
paintings, he encompasses the entire history of abstraction, merging Color Field Painting, Abstract Expressionism, and Hard-Edged Geometry in his allover compositions. Intermingling passages of pixilation
and color gradation based on computer graphics, his acrylic-on-canvas works
seem to be formed of layered scrims. He often begins Abstract
Expressionist-style, with bold, lush brushstrokes and generous smears of
pigment. Onto this ground he overlays stripes and undulating lines recalling Op Art illusions and screen savers. These run up against sections of
saturated color and the drips that became so synonymous with Jackson Pollock.

If Trueman focuses on the clashing intersections
of various strands of abstraction, Mark Harrington, more of a minimalist, explores the overlap between painting and
sculpture in his acrylic-on-linen compositions. In the mid- to large-scale
works on view, he strips art down to its essence, which he describes as: “No
narrative. No symbolism. No reference. No representation.” He is, in other
words, interested in the purely physical qualities of paint on canvas, which,
in his hands, appears as fat, variously textured horizontal bands.

Harrington’s works resemble distressed wood,
birch bark, or Gerhard Richter’s squeegee paintings. To make them, he ices his canvases with an
impasto layer of pigment, then scrapes away portions with tools he makes
himself, creating bands alternating between opacity and translucency. Each work
has its own, internal visual logic, premised on the surprising plasticity of
the seemingly immaterial phenomena of light, space, shallowness, and depth.